Plain Bad Heroines
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4.3 • 6 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
‘Brimming from start to finish with sly humour and gothic mischief’ SARAH WATERS
‘Beguilingly clever, very sexy and seriously frightening’ GUARDIAN
‘Atmospheric, sexy, creepy…totally addictive’ KATE DAVIES, author of In At The Deep End
‘A gloriously over-the-top queer romp’ I PAPER
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‘It’s a terrible story and one way to tell it is this: two girls in love and a fog of wasps cursed the place forever after…’
BROOKHANTS SCHOOL FOR GIRLS: Infamous site of a series of tragic deaths over a hundred years ago. Soon to be the subject of a controversial horror movie about the rumoured ‘Brookhants curse’:
In the early 1900’s, Brookhants students Flo and Clara fell madly in love, brought together by their obsession for a scandalous memoir.
A few months later they were found dead in the woods, after a horrific wasp attack, the book lying next to their intertwined bodies.
Three more grisly deaths followed before the school was forced to close.
Now, the school’s doors are open once more. But as the crew of glamorous young actresses assemble to start filming, past and present begin to blur. And soon it’s impossible to tell quite where the curse ends and Hollywood begins…
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‘Buzzing with wickedness…sly, wry and dangerous to know’ Rosie Garland
‘Ingenious, jaw-dropping…a queer roar and it's terrifying and it's a goddamned triumph’ Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World
‘Wears its brilliance lightly…it's dark, sweet, and addictive. Simply one of the best books I've read in the last decade’ Joe Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Fireman
‘A hot amalgamation of gothic horror and Hollywood satire, it’s draped with depth but bursting with life’ Washington Post
‘A deviously delicious cake’ O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE
About the author
emily m. danforth is the author of the highly-acclaimed young adult novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She lives with her wife and two terrible dogs in Rhode Island. This is her first adult novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Danforth's sumptuous sophomore novel (after The Miseducation of Cameron Post) chronicles the allegedly cursed 1902 memoir The Story of Mary MacLane and its link to the shuttered Brookhants School for Girls in Little Compton, R.I. In the present, Merritt Emmons is reviewing the screenplay adaptation of her book about three students who died at Brookhants in 1902, two of whom were attacked by a swarm of wasps under the watch of principal Libbie Brookhants and her partner Alex Trills, who also met eerie, premature deaths. The dead students had been obsessed with MacLane's memoir, in which the author invokes the devil to satisfy her desire for women. Merritt has been asked to consult on the film, which features lesbian superstar Harper Harper and subpar but earnest Audrey Wells, who is told by the film's director that the shoot, on location at Brookhants, will be rigged with spooky events to elicit genuine responses. On set, though, there is very real evidence of hauntin. Danforth creates a fantastic sense of dread andchampions queer female relationships throughout, delving into Libbie and Alex's history and how their circumstances doomed them to their fate. Even readers who aren't fans of horror will appreciate this bighearted story.
Customer Reviews
Heroine worship
3.5 stars
Author
American. Now 40. MFA from University of Montana. PhD from University of Nebraska. Also attended Hofstra (New York's largest private university), where she came out. Now Assoc Prof of English at Rhode Island College. Her debut novel, The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2012), is about a 12-year-old Montana girl who lives with her aunt and grandmother after the deaths of her parents in a motor vehicle accident. After she dabbles with homosexuality, her highly conservative guardians send her to a "conversion camp." A 2018 movie adaptation with Chloë Grace Moretz in the title role did well at Sundance, but probably suffered commercially given that Joel Egerton's Boy Erased, starring Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, came out the same year. (Pun not intended.) This is Ms Danforth's sophomore effort.
Plot
It's 1902, the setting a private girls' boarding school in Rhode Island. Flo and Clara are impressionable young devotees of Mary Maclane, who wrote confessional style autobiographical stuff popular at the time with a certain type of gal. (Hint: those with sapphic tendencies). Parenthetically, Ms Maclane hailed from Montana like Ms Danforth (In fact, she was born in Canada, but moved with her family to Montana as a child, but let's not split hairs) and was once labelled "the wild woman of Butte." (Get your minds out of the gutter. Butte is a town in Montana.) Basically, Flo and Clara get it on, then get stung to death by a swarm of yellow jackets, which are wasps with a serious attitude problem. More tragedy follows when another chick O/D's on angel's trumpet and croaks. The school goes out of business soon after.
Fast forward to the present day Los Angeles. Merritt, a descendent of the family that ran the school back in the day, writes a detailed history of events at the school, which is thought haunted by many, and is labelled a literary wunderkind as a result because she was only 16 when she wrote it. (Grandma helped a lot). She's now 21 and allegedly working on finishing Truman Capote's final unfinished novel but has got diddly so far. (Something she has in common with Capote). Then a rising indie, Indian American director named Bo (think gay version of M Night Shyamalan) buys the rights to make a movie of her book about the school: a goth lesbian horror flick, but classy, you know. The star is a young, hot, lesbian star called Harper Harper (her parents were Harper Lee fans). Also cast is Audrey, the daughter of a 1980s scream queen turned real estate agent. Bo cons Audrey into cooperating with the meta-concept he has to make a film about the real life interactions and conflicts between her, Harper, and Merritt while they are filming the movie about Merritt's book, except he doesn't want to to tell the other two till it's finished so it's, like, more authentic than Blair Witch Project. Or something. Artistic concepts have never been my strong point. The action shifts back and forth in time as the book unfolds.
Narrative
Third person with liberal breaking of the fourth wall, as in the omniscient narrator frequently speaks to we readers directly, as in "Listen up, Readers, check this out," or words to that effect. Black and white cartoons in the style popular around fin de siècle time are scattered through the narrative. Clever, right?
Characters
Every important is queer or bi. Some tend to caricature, but are meant to I think. Others, especially Harper Harper, are quite nuanced. Straight people don't get a look in.
Prose
Ms Danforth is clearly a woman of imagination, capable of cranking out super witty observations. Lots of tropes too: teen (well, twenty-something) romance/angst, gothic horror, queer writing, meta fiction as mentioned. Pity it's about 200 pages too long.
Bottom line
At the risk of being labelled a lesbian friendly old white guy, I enjoyed this. I would have enjoyed it more if it were shorter.
Brilliant book!
Very captivating, one of the best ones in a long time.